Friday, February 28, 2014

Malaysia again had a new record breaking year of investments in the manufacturing, services and primary sectors in 2013 with total approved investments of RM216.5 billion, a very commendable achievement amidst a challenging external environment. In 2012, the country attracted a total of RM167.8 billion in direct investments, which was the highest amount ever recorded.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has praised the Saudi government's labor policies, particularly its plans to reduce youth unemployment and increase the participation of women in the economy.

FIFA recognized the terrible conditions for migrant workers in Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup, at a European Parliament hearing but fell short of calling for an end to the kafala visa system which enslaves people working in the country.

Based on current data ”more than 4.000 workers will die before a ball is kicked in 2022” said Sharan Burrow

The General Secretary from the International Trade Unions Confederation (ITUC), Sharan Burrow claimed that “Qatar is a slave state for 1.4 million migrant workers. It doesn’t have to be that way. Qatar chooses to build its modern nation with the labour of migrant workers and deliberately chooses to maintain a system that treats these workers as less than human.”

Trade unions, human rights groups and the International Labor Organization (ILO) gave evidence to Parliamentarians about the need for workers in Qatar to have a proper workplace representation and to have a voice without fear of retaliation.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

In commemoration of the “World Day for Social Justice”, Linda Eroke examines the challenges faced by workers, including the pervasive structural injustice in the Nigerian work environment

Feb 20 every year has been designated the United Nations’ (UN) World Day for Social Justice. This special day is observed to encourage people to look at how social justice affects poverty eradication, decent work and gender equity. It also focuses on the goal of achieving full employment and support for social integration.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Recent reports have once again highlighted the horrendous conditions that workers endure while building the infrastructure needed for the 2022 Football World Cup. While the government of Qatar does not care about the deaths of these migrant workers, the reality is that the use of migrant labour and the suppression of independent trade unions allow companies to make huge profits. Only by constructingindependent trade unions will we be able to improve the conditions for workers in West Asia.source:::http://www.aawl.org

Friday, February 21, 2014

From Feb. 12 to 14, hourly workers at Volkswagen’s four-year-old plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted on whether or not to be represented by the United Auto Workers. The final tally showed an unexpected 712-626 rejection of the UAW. Business writers are calling this a “devastating” (Detroit Free Press) and “crushing defeat.” (Wall Street Journal)

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

On 19 February, IndustriALL Global Union, the ITUC and a number of global brands will meet with the Cambodian government to discuss the situation in the country’s garment industry following police violence that left four workers dead.

The violent end to the strike of Cambodian garment workers, rallying for an increased minimum wage in January, left four people dead, 39 injured and 23 workers imprisoned. Recently two workers were released. Of the remaining 21 detainees, 16 are on hunger strike.

Gender stereotypes are common in the Pakistani media and continue to make it difficult for women to play an equal role in the country’s workforceIt is a fact that the media in Pakistan depicts the gender bias in our rigorously patriarchal society. The enormous influence the media has on constituting social change is also incontestable. However, it seems increasingly otiose to rely on the media to bring forth any change in this regard as long as Pakistan’s leading newspapers are still carrying jargon such as “lady” reporter. With the ratio of one in 20 female reporters in Pakistan, a fair and balanced gender representation in the media is absent. The significant misfortune is the lack of gender sensitive material currently being produced by the news media.

Weak global growth had a cascading effect on hiring activities across most regions in 2013, says the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Global Employment Trends 2014 report. Notwithstanding a 1.9 per cent rise in South Asia hiring, employment rates saw a decline in most parts of the world in 2013. Nevertheless, the increase in South Asia recruitment was sufficient to make up for the slippage, resulting in the global employment growth rate remaining unchanged at 1.4 per cent last year.

The ILO expects the global unemployment rate to increase from 6 per cent in 2013 to 6.1 per cent in 2014. It has also projected that the number of unemployed will rise by 4.2 million during the year. Despite signs of economic recovery in developed economies, the job market continues to be lacklustre. While the unemployment rate is expected to gradually decline, by 2018, it will still be around 8 per cent – much above pre-crisis levels.

Unemployment rates in non-EU countries and the Commonwealth of Independent States have been decreasing since 2009. But this witnessed a reversal in 2013, with a 0.2 percentage point increase in the number of people without jobs. It’s possible that job growth may remain muted in the future too. In the South-East Asian and Pacific region (including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand), hiring activities grew by 1.6 per cent in 2013.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) today declared a dividend rate of 6.35 per cent for the financial year ending Dec 31 2013, representing the biggest ever dividend payout of RM31.2 billion to its members, up 13.66 per cent over the RM27.45 billion paid in 2012.

In a statement, EPF Chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman said thanks to the fund’s robust yet prudent investment strategies, its performance has been consistently stable, especially in the past five years.

“Over the years, we have been diversifying our portfolio, thereby spreading out the scope of our assets to manage market risks and generate consistent returns,” he said.

At a press conference today in Jakarta, Said Iqbal president of IndustriALL affiliate FSPMI and the KSPI confederation, together with Jyrki Raina, secretary general of IndustriALL Global Union, sent a clear message to the Indonesian government: the minimum wage must be raised to a living wage and all workers must benefit from social security.IndustriALL Global Union secretary general Jyrki Raina expressed the global union’s full support for the Indonesian trade unions’ campaign for continued increases of minimum wages to secure a living wage, the social security reform and limiting outsourcing in favour of decent jobs.

Representatives of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on Thursday met with Labor Ministry officials to discuss the draft trade union law, which the government plans to put into effect by the end of 2014, an ILO representative said.

Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted against United Autoworker representation by a margin of 87 votes Friday night, in a painful defeat for the U.S. labor movement seeking to gain a foothold in the traditionally labor-hostile South.

The UAW, which had placed a high stake on its push to expand labor representation to the South, was defeated in a 712-626 vote at the Chattanooga plant, the Associated Press reports.

Friday, February 14, 2014

My union Unifor is currently undertaking an important"Rights at Work" campaign, which involves a national tour of meetings with our officers and local leaders and stewards, followed by a membership canvass and community outreach effort, all aimed at beating back the current attack on fundamental labour rights coming from conservatives at all levels in Canada. So far the campaign has had a very strong reception. Ontario will be a key battleground, of course, since the future of the Rand Formula will be decided in the next election (as early as this spring), but similar attacks on labour rights are being experienced at the federal level and in many other provinces.

The journalists' union blames Umno and BN for having curtailed press freedom since independence

PETALING JAYA: National Union of Journalists (NUJ) today called for the repeal of the Publishing Presses and Printing Act 1984 to allow for balanced news coverage even though the government promised to amend the act.

“The new government of Najib Tun Razak was supposed to seriously look into various draconian laws that constrict press freedom and threaten journalists,” said NUJ Malaysia president, Chin Sung Chew in a press statement.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The resolutions adopted at the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa’s (NUMSA’s) congress in December mark an important rupture in South African politics. NUMSA, the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (COSATU’s) largest affiliate, has refused to endorse the African National Congress (ANC) ahead of this year’s elections and is to explore the establishment of a new movement for socialism. This is a significant challenge to the increasingly contested leadership of the ANC-led alliance, not least because it seeks to build and draw on a mass movement in order to win social and economic change. In our view, it is also the most promising development that progressives – those who support substantial economic and social change in favour of the disadvantaged – could have hoped for.